Hurry up and Wait

I realize that saying how long I worked today or how little I slept last night is a symptom of insecurity. It's fishing for sympathy. So I'll temper it with lack of detail. But I'm starting to feel it, here in the coffee shop with my writer pals, trying to remember the plot of that old novel that needs finishing...

Someone observed last week that my "self-awareness" was so extreme as to be crippling.

So is shyness or claims of introversion a manifestation of narcissism? Self-exiled in self-involvement? I think maybe yes.

I miss Wales with an physical ache. The Welsh call it hiraeth. Heart-sick homesickness, even if its for something that isn't technically your home. Writing something set there both helps and makes it harder.

But I have these characters in limbo between plot points who I feel have been looking up at me expectantly over crossed arms, occassionally checking their watches and sighing heavily. Like, Hel-LO? Remember us?

So I'll see if I can move the ahead a couple of squares on the board.

Bird by bird.

Fallen but Rising

Last week I was hit hard by a fresh reminder of how we are all, to some degree, morally compromised. Flawed, yes. And sometimes really ethically broken. But also, even the best of us, scarred by a thousand little cuts--nicks in our integrity. Does this make us human? Or keep us from being human? Or is it the recognition of it, and how we respond to that, the test of the caliber of our humanity?

I spent a couple of days feeling old and as in mourning. I think it was over the loss of another layer of innocence. Is there any going back?

But this is, after all, a time of change for me. After a year plus being dormant in so many ways, I feel new things coming. New and good, slowly building up like green seedlings pushing through the damp dark earth toward light. Have I said this before? If so, I hope I can attribute it to the cyclical nature of things rather than neurosis. I'd rather believe it's a valid rebirth happening, and not same-old-tune mutterings like a drunkard's forgetful promise.

(a piece of garden, 4/09)